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    Cryptocurrency Weekly Skepticism - January 14, 2018

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    Cryptocurrency Weekly Skepticism - January 14, 2018

    Weekly Skepticism - January 14, 2018

    Posted: 13 Jan 2018 10:13 PM PST

    Welcome to the Weekly Skeptic's Thread.

    The goal of this thread is to go against the norm and bring people out of their comfort zones by focusing on critical discussion only. This thread will be stickied in place of the Daily General Discussion thread on Sundays. To be consistent with the theme of this thread, suggested commment sorting will be set to controversial.

    Guidelines:

    • Uncertainties, shortcomings, concerns related to crypto are welcome.
    • Please refer topics such as price, gossip, events, etc to the Daily General Discussion thread.
    • Please report promotional top-level comments or shilling.

    Rules:

    • All sub rules apply in this thread.
    • Discussion topics must be on topic, ie only related to critical discussion about cryptocurrency. Shilling or promotional top-level comments will be removed. Violations of this rule could result in temporary or permanent ban.
    • Unlike the daily discussion thread, the karma and age requirements are in effect here.

    Resources and Tools:

    • Click the RES subscribe button below if you would like to be notified when comments are posted.
    • Consider reading through or contributing to r/CryptoWikis. r/CryptoWikis is the home subreddit of the CryptoWiki project which aims to give an equal voice to pro and con opinions on all coins, businesses, etc involved with cryptocurrency.
    • If you're' looking for the Daily General Discussion thread, click here select the latest item in the search listing.

    Thank you in advance for your participation. Enjoy!

    submitted by /u/AutoModerator
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    Vechain partners with China Central Government owned China National Tobacco Corporation

    Posted: 14 Jan 2018 12:17 AM PST

    VeChain Official Tweet:“First Mover to Disrupt, Deploy in Force One Market at a time”

    Posted: 13 Jan 2018 06:26 PM PST

    Want to try out RaiBlocks? Have some free XRB.

    Posted: 13 Jan 2018 07:53 PM PST

    Heads Up On Request Network (REQ)

    Posted: 13 Jan 2018 05:00 PM PST

    After 2 recent moon missions and some downward corrections, Request Network looks like it might have hit its floor. It's making small moves back north, and after all the support, priming, and shilling it's received, especially on this sub, it's likely primed for another big jump up. It could be one to keep an eye on tonight...

    submitted by /u/noveler7
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    When your favorite alt coin is being manipulated by a greedy mammal.

    Posted: 14 Jan 2018 01:58 AM PST

    When the numbers keep dropping every time you check your portfolio

    Posted: 13 Jan 2018 11:24 PM PST

    Introduction to ICON (ICX)- Icon explained in 4 minutes

    Posted: 13 Jan 2018 05:49 PM PST

    When your total % gain starts to go up again after a dip/correction

    Posted: 13 Jan 2018 04:45 AM PST

    When time is money

    Posted: 13 Jan 2018 09:29 AM PST

    CryptoNick is a Scammer:

    Posted: 14 Jan 2018 12:00 AM PST

    Why Stellar will become a huge success in 2018. Interesting read.

    Posted: 13 Jan 2018 04:54 PM PST

    Blockterm v.0.2 released: now with Portfolio, Twitter Feeds, Price Delta Map, and more [gif] ~ details in comments

    Posted: 13 Jan 2018 04:43 PM PST

    A Hiddel Pearl Deep Within The Ocean

    Posted: 14 Jan 2018 03:03 AM PST

    There are certainly a lot of posts out there claiming that a specific coin is the "rare gem" or "the one" but they're usually backed by zero facts and have close to no information for their audience to read into. They're filled with nothing but hype and price speculation that I personally hate also. I'm not here today to tell you that this coin is going to moon or it's going to rocket up. If anyone tells you that they're just straight up lying and you shouldn't fall for those type of posts either. The reason why I created this post is to inform others who wanted to know more about PRL in a detailed and informative post, a post where I try to take a neutral stance. I'd like you all to hear me out first before chasing me down with a torch and a pitchfork while calling me a "shill".

    I'm a fundamental investor myself and only invest in things that I think would have great potential in the future. I also try to read the whitepaper and ask questions about a project before putting my money in. It doesn't matter if I'm investing $1 or $1 million, I personally think it's crucial that you know the concept behind something that you invest in. Would you invest in a coin that record animal feces using blockchain just because it was hyped up to the front page of r/cryptocurrency?

    With the amount of price speculation post and hype circulating around PRL recently, it didn't take much until my emotions took over. It wasn't a while back that a "shilling" post of PRL caught my attention. Although I dislike the price speculation about PRL that was in the post, it got me curious about PRL and what it was capable of.

    What is Oyster Protocol?

    As described on their website, "Oyster enables a user-friendly way to implement both its revenue generation (only have to add a line of code), and file storage. While the floor value is pegged to the value of storage it provides. Oyster allows websites to have their own financial autonomy by not relying on monolithic advertising platforms like Google and Facebook. Any of these platforms can bully a website due to political motivations, whilst the advertisements themselves are rarely assertion-neutral. All completely decentralized."

    Oh, so it's a coin that does anonymous storage and will mine PRL for site owners. It also uses blockchain + tangle, wow pretty revolutionary. But wait a second, why use PRL when I can use Coinhive to make users to mine Monero for me?

    It turns out PRL is somewhat different from what Coinhive is trying to accomplish. The purpose of mining PRL is to maintain data integrity in the Tangle while also using much less processing power. Oyster is designed to have a lighter touch, especially for phones and tablets. It's trying to achieve a CPU usage where a website with ads would also use. We also have to remember that we're at an age where we can run GTA:SA on our phones, imagine in 5 years... During the upcoming testnet A and B, developers will try to optimize PRL and find the sweet spot.

    But wait... Wouldn't it be slow to upload the file onto tangle?

    PRL is made for tangle in its final form. Of course it'll still work with it's current state and users can feel free to test PRL on it's mainnet launch coming April. But by investing in PRL, you're essentially betting that Tangle would do well.

    Why invest in PRL?

    Of course, I'm a human too. Although I like the fundamentals behind PRL, I crave money too. Compared to other projects out there PRL has a lot of huge upcoming events as outlined on their road map. That makes it easy for me to get some gains as a mid term hold. They have a Testnet A coming end of Jan, Testnet B by end of Feb, and the final release by April. This is by far the fastest final release I've ever seen on any crypto roadmaps. Also, it's not listed on any high volume exchanges at the moment.

    They also have one of the most transparent team ever. Everytime you go on telegram, it feels like you're working behind the scenes with them. It feels like one big happy family and whenever there's FUD, the devs would come out and address them in a professional manner.

    But... But.. But... This?

    It's always good to have doubts and have questions about a product before you invest in it. This is also why I learned a lot about this project. I asked a lot on their subreddit and also their telegram. Their devs are always actively answering questions that anyone may have through their Oyster Knowledge telegram channel. You may also feel free to ask anything down below and I'll try my best to answer them.

    As I've mentioned at the beginning of the post, I hate it when people try to create FOMO and hype up a coin with no facts to back them up. I also hate it when people try to create FUD with zero facts and haven't done their homework yet. So all I ask is for you to also try your best to also post a constructive comment below if you want to kill me with a pitchfork. Thank you all for reading this.

    submitted by /u/Ernest_EA
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    97.5% out of +1000 cryptocurrencies are in concept and/or useless. Do your research before investing!

    Posted: 13 Jan 2018 12:14 PM PST

    If you have anything to do with prices in your research process (outside of over/under valuations), then you are doing something wrong. Do your research and become familiar with it. Check for a product, team background, and distruptive use cases! The 97.5% will become noticed, don't get rekt!!!

    submitted by /u/no-more-lurking-
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    A Breakdown of the 4 Leading Financial Cryptocurrencies

    Posted: 13 Jan 2018 10:29 AM PST

    This post is written by a friend of mine who works in the financial services industry. I'm posting it for him because he doesn't have a Reddit account:

    I work in the financial services industry myself, and I decided it might be beneficial to provide my opinion on some of the leading financial cryptos based off their website/white papers/news I've read. Today I'll be covering the 4 leading financial cryptos in my opinion: XRP, REQ, OMG, XLM.

    Market Cap & Ranking Graph

    Ripple (XRP)

    1. Description: Cross border transactions between banks and payment providers

    2. Slogan: "Enterprise blockchain solutions for global payments"

    3. Potential Market Size: $155 trillion/year cross border transactions (McKinsey Global Payments Industry Study)

    4. Primary Focus: Ripple has had huge success lately given its focus on satisfying and providing cross-border payment services for big banks, who have driven up the price of Ripple. It currently has 100+ customers and has the most enterprise traction of the four coins. One big risk is the 55 billiion XRP put into an escrow out of a max 100 billion XRP. Once these escrows expire, there is always the risk of the company flooding the market with XRP. That being said, while Ripple is much further ahead than the other 3 coins, I fear that banks will license Ripple's blockchain that is centrally governed without intended usage of their token.

    5. Architecture: Built on Ripple (payment protocol)

    6. Market Cap: ~$77B

    Request Network (REQ)

    1. Description: A decentralized network for payment requests

    2. Slogan: "The Future of Commerce"

    3. Potential Market Size: $1,825 trillion/year on the SWIFT network that Request Network can capture on its platform (Extrapolated using daily historicals from U.S. Dept. of Treasury)

    4. Primary Focus: Request Network, also known as "Paypal 2.0" is a Y-Combinator-backed project created by the founders of Moneytis. Request Network has the biggest opportunity of the four. They are building out the infrastructure for payments and accounting/auditing between both businesses and consumers. Request will be more secure (blockchain tech), intelligent (smart contracts and IoT) and universal (supports all currencies both Fiat and cryptocurrencies) than Paypal. A key differentiator of Request is its usage of "token burning" during transactions, which intrinsically increases the value of the remaining REQ coins. In addition, Request is heavily focused on reputation management and helping accountants and auditors easily review transactions at extremely low costs. My concern here is that they are the earliest stage project of the four and also the most ambitious project, soon to be released on Mainnet. That being said, their team has executed ahead of planned timelines and I believe they seem to have the right expertise to get the job done.

    5. Architecture: Built on Ethereum

    6. Market Cap: ~$480M (Market cap is ~1/194 the size of Paypal at current valuation)

    7. Paypal Market Cap for comparison: ~$97B

    OmiseGo (OMG)

    1. Description: Advanced e-wallet and payment platform

    2. Slogan: "Unbank the Banked with Ethereum."

    3. Potential Market Size: N/A (market not clearly defined)

    4. Primary Focus: Many people around the world can't get a credit card or pay for items online because geographically there are no banks around or their credit score is too low to receive financial services. OmiseGo looks to change that by enabling everyone in especially in developing countries to create an e-wallet that enables this underserved population the ability to cash in and cash out without a bank account at low costs. They have an enormous presence in Asia, and their vision is to look like the bank of the future. My concerns here are adoption outside of the Asian countries given the difficulty of scaling across geographies as well as a tough name to pronounce resulting in the necessity for a potential re-branding, but a very solid project with a fair amount of adoption nevertheless.

    5. Architecture: Built on Ethereum

    6. Market Cap: ~$2.5B

    OmiseGo Edit:

    Some additional points to note are its recent acquisition of Paysbuy (large payment service provider in Thailand) and partnerships with McDonald's Thailand and Alipay. It's often thought REQ and OMG are quite similar which they are, but their focus is different. OMG is firstly focused on banking and e-wallet services, while REQ is currently more focused on the actual payment request process and the accounting behind it, which you'll realize are quite different despite both moving in the same direction.

    Stellar (XLM)

    1. Description: Cross border currency transfers between developing countries

    2. Slogan: "Move Money Across Borders Quickly, Reliably, And For Fractions Of A Penny"

    3. Potential Market Size: N/A (market not clearly defined)

    4. Primary Focus: Stellar competes directly with Ripple at different ends of the market. Stellar is a great project focused on providing low-cost financial services for lower classed individuals, whereas Ripple is focused on profit generation and founded by ex-bankers. Stellar differentiates itself through solutions targeted around micropayments, mobile banking and services for the underbanked (similar to OmiseGo). The thing I like about Stellar is that structurally it is set-up as a non-profit and something established for the people to easily exchange money between one another. I think the market is large enough to support multiple competitors, but it is important to note that they compete with Ripple in cross-border transactions and OmiseGo in services to the underbanked.

    5. Architecture: Built on Stellar (payment network)

    6. Market Cap: ~$11.7B

    Stellar Edit:

    Expanding on Stellar based off comments, let's clarify that Stellar is indeed founded by one of the co-founders of Ripple, which makes them somewhat similar. But wanted to key in on a few more points that make XLM unique: no mining with circulating supply of 100 billion lumens from the start @ 1% inflation rate and a recent partnership with IBM for cross-border payments as a bridge currency. Finally it's important to look at their Stellar Development Foundation, which controls the distribution of Lumens. Distribution is split as follows: 50% through Direct Sign-up Program, 25% through Partnership Program, 20% through Bitcoin program and 5% held by the foundation to support operations. Note this effect is huge because they can also unleash a large amount of lumens, but they do have a more defined mandate for dilution than Ripple.

    Read more about it here: https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/

    Disclaimer and Final Words:

    I am a holder of all four coins, but from a returns standpoint, I am most bullish on Request Network given it has the largest market size, smallest market cap and an incredible team. But from a risk standpoint, Ripple is the lowest risk coin to hold given its widespread adoption and use across numerous banks that are displayed on their website. Honorable mention for both Stellar and OmiseGo, which are superb projects that will still succeed. Remember that the financial market is extremely deep with trillions of dollars in transactions moved every day, so there is ample room for all four of these coins to find their niche whether it is in a certain region of the world or in certain product types (i.e. micropayments). All in all, you can't go wrong holding a portfolio of these four coins because each one of these cryptocurrencies are going to kill it in 2018!

     

    Sources:

    1. https://ripple.com/

    2. https://omisego.network/

    3. https://request.network/#/

    4. https://www.stellar.org/

    5. https://coinmarketcap.com/

    submitted by /u/brianjly
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    We are still in a very early stage of cryptocurrency

    Posted: 13 Jan 2018 03:12 PM PST

    I've been trading for a year now, started when Bitcoin was about $900 and have experienced a lot of the ups and downs, the exciting times and the stale times. Cryptocurrency will be consistently reevaluated over the next several years. To all of you "get rich quick" guys, be patient, don't succumb to flashy marketing because there is A LOT of it in the market right now, and a lot of you will lose money because of it. I'm not here to shill for any currencies but for cryptocurrency as a whole. Right now we are in the wild west, anyone can start a coin put good marketing behind it and take money from the public. Get invested into the tech and not the money, you will be rewarded in the end. Look for currencies that have a good dev team, community, source code, and white paper. If you focus on the long term instead of the FOMO on random coins being pumped you will be rewarded. In my personal experience those that focus too much on the short term are the ones that actually miss out in the long run. Don't listen to currency specific shill posts on here, I strongly encourage that you all do your own research.

    submitted by /u/lgnd4life
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    Beginners Guide: How to Spot a Shitcoin

    Posted: 13 Jan 2018 03:25 PM PST

    Hey guys, for the newbies out here, I've been extensively researching coins- and I have a review on nearly every one in the top 200. I am not going to mention any coins specifically, but I want to outline a few tips on how to spot if a coin is a "shitcoin". Please note that there are exceptions to every one of these rules and I am not referring to any specific coins. Also these rules aren't in any order. Also most of these rules are for long term holds, it's possible to make money on nearly anything in the short term if you buy and sell at the right time.

    1. The coin is a shitcoin if the team promises things they can't keep. If a team says that you're guaranteed to make money- all in all, that is simply false. It's impossible to guarantee anything- especially in this market.

    2. If the team is anonymous, and it is a normal project (I understand many privacy coins have anonymous teams and that's sometimes ok) it is fishy. There is no reason for any team to be private if they're doing a regular project unless they want to hide something.

    3. No whitepaper or working product: An idea may be great, it may be revolutionary, but with no whitepaper or working product or patent at the least it's useless. The bigger the idea, the harder it is to accomplish.

    4. Generally, it isn't good when a coin claims it is a disruptor. Unless the coin is a giant project, with a large team, a product, etc... being a disruptor isn't necessarily a good thing. This buzz word implies that they are trying to replace huge company behind it, and it is foolish to think a coin with a team of a few people with no product can beat out a google or a yahoo. In general, it is a better investment if they are trying to work around technology or build on it.

    5. With time, comes change: If a project has a road map multiple years out, it is very possible that by the time they reach that point, the product is already produced elsewhere.

    6. Don't be fooled by a big team of advisors. Many advisors are simply there for the name and because they get paid a lot- look into the product and don't blindly follow names.

    7. Ignore corrupt ICO's: Many ICOs I see have the team getting 30% or 40% and claim that they're decentralized- that is usually false.

    8. Don't be fooled by coins with low prices that people say are steals with high market caps. A coin with a 10 billion dollar market cap can be 10 cents and a coin with a 1 million market cap can be 10 dollars.

    9. The team isn't on linkedin and little is known about them: There's simply no reason not to be on linkedin or give info about the team unless there is something to hide.

    10. Don't rely on teams making improvements: If a team is bad in marketing and have a good product, that doesn't mean they will grow and become mainstream- marketing specifically is one of the most important aspects (If not the most important aspect) in becoming mainstream.

    11. Stay away from projects that aren't on social media: If a project wants to be the next big thing and doesn't even bother to have a social media page, then stay far away.

    12. Be careful with team/investor shilling: A certain amount of hype can be a good thing, but too much hype can be bad. This can lead to the company being audited, investigated, and overvalued.

    13. If you don't know what the website is after reading the website's pages- then don't invest in it. If the common person can't understand their product, that is likely a problem (Unless they're targeting a specific base, which can also be an issue)

    14- Don't worry about the project starting off small. It is actually healthy to start off small and grow big. Look at facebook, they started off with the harvard connection, which was localized, and grew into the biggest social networks in the world.

    15- Don't ignore small projects. There are projects out there with a 10 million dollar cap that have as much potential as one with 100 million dollar cap. Low cap doesn't mean bad product.

    16- If there is a lot of competition in the market, make sure they mention it on their site/white paper. If a project is similar to another project in a similar position and they don't compare their products on their whitepaper, it may not be a good product.

    17- Take note of the name. When people check up the project, it's not a good look when they're on the bottom of the page on a google search. This is very important in regards to mainstream adoption.

    18- Look for details in a whitepaper- If the whitepaper just explains what blockchain and bitcoin are, then it is likely fishy. Look for specific details.

    If there is anything else anyone would like to add, please do so. Hopefully this is helpful to you guys.

    submitted by /u/EnnisCheick
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    TED Talks: How the blockchain is changing money and business by Don Tapscott (Amazing Talk)

    Posted: 13 Jan 2018 06:09 PM PST

    [PSA] Coinbase cost me $3500 because of a dangerous bug in their IOS app, and won't respond to any messages! Be careful using Coinbase!

    Posted: 13 Jan 2018 11:13 AM PST

    Disclaimer: I am trying to get visibility for my issue, since it seems Coinbase only responds to dumpster fire reddit threads. Please help me get visibility, and warn others about the dangerous instability of Coinbase's system.

     

    On 12/22, I sold $3.5k of BTC -> USD Wallet using the Coinbase IOS app, which should be instant, but my USD wallet never recieved the funds. This was about 20 days ago, and I have had straight radio silence from Coinbase despite submitting a ticket.

    Here is as much proof as I can give: https://imgur.com/a/S0XqP

    And my support ticket: 3124585

     

    I have tried renaming my USD Wallet as many users have suggested, but to no avail. This should be a fairly simple issue to diagnose and fix from Coinbase's side, and if this is a common occurrence it presents a larger issue: If Coinbase has floating USD/BTC/ETH debits/credits to a large # of customers, then they are exposed PRINCIPALLY to crypto prices and this creates a high solvency risk!

    I think this should cause us to reevaluate Coinbase's credibility. Thoughts?

       

    EDIT: Let me clarify how the floating USD/BTC debit/credit can work.

    I put my sell order in @$13200 during a very fast market. If it was input as a limit order, theres a chance the market moved away from me before I could execute, and so my order was invalid. The bug here is that it represented to me as executed and completed.

    In which case, they still have my 0.25 BTC. And they've represented to me that I sold my 0.25 BTC @ $13200 for ~$3500.

    So now they would have a 0.25 BTC credit and ~$3500 debit. If the price of BTC were to go below $13200, they would be unable to convert the BTC->USD for $3500, and be on the hook for the remaining $. Which is why I question their liquidity.

    Otherwise they could always just return 0.25 BTC to me, but that's a whole another issue.

    To be clear, this issue seems to be isolated to fast market environments, but that's exactly when you can't have execution bugs.

    EDIT: paging /u/coinbase_tom, /u/coinbase_josh, /u/Coinbase_Bill_Lou etc

    submitted by /u/disgruntledcrypto
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    Stellar's 2018 adoption plan crushes BTC, ETH & LTC's

    Posted: 13 Jan 2018 03:59 PM PST

    ELI5 why the bubble will NOT burst before the year ends?

    Posted: 14 Jan 2018 12:09 AM PST

    A lot of people say that it won't burst this year because "crypto is still very young." But wasn't the internet also relatively young when the dot com bubble burst?

    I'm also asking this because admittedly, I'm one of the many who joined the craze just last December, and I assume that many are asking this same question.

    The entire crypto market cap when 2017 started was around 18 billion dollars. It ended the year with around 560 billion - around a 3000% increase.

    Again, I'm no expert, so I just assume that the market cap is unlikely to increase by 3000% again in 2018 simply because it would mean that the market cap would be at least 16 trillion when the year ends, which sounds ridiculous.

    But then again, I also think that some of the older people here would counter with the argument that when they were here when they saw the market cap at the start of 2017 was just less than 20 billion, that many would have thought that it increasing by 30 times its value by the end of the year, would also have been ridiculous.

    But back to what actually happened, we know that the market cap increased by around 3000% last year. Does that mean that the likelihood of the bubble bursting in 2018 is significantly higher, just slightly higher, or does it merely mean that it won't burst in 2018, but it's just that we won't see as insane gains as we did in 2017?

    submitted by /u/WowHelloHi
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    KPN, one of Europe's largest telecom companies, partners with NEO and will host a full consensus node.

    Posted: 13 Jan 2018 07:20 AM PST

    APPC listed on Huobi (China's biggest exchange) and BITTREX

    Posted: 13 Jan 2018 11:10 PM PST

    The biggest exchange apparently in China has just listed APPC. Much needed breakthrough.

    Is China crazy when it comes to crypto? I'm expecting a surge soon 🚀🚀

    What do you guys think? Any estimates for the month?

    submitted by /u/vedant1903
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    Fortuna CEO draws crowds at Finwise Summit in Macau

    Posted: 14 Jan 2018 02:55 AM PST

    Can we stop pretending to be idealistic samaritans that get offended by money grabbing ?

    Posted: 14 Jan 2018 03:34 AM PST

    So,

    Yes, blockchain is our time's revolution, i know we are gonna change things for the better. Several projects are gonna improve economy, healthcare, everyday life, gaming, hell even the porn industry in great manner.

    But what is it with people getting offended by moneytalk and barging in like "Hell man it's not about how much you can make with it but how good the project is gonna seed and spread, this is much more important than money". All the variants of these, are quite hypocritical.

    Who said that any project needs selfless people to evolve ? They DO need our investments and voices to reach mainstream, and money IS an incentive.

    I believe in a few projects wholeheartedly but i do need to live and improve my life as anyone would.

    There is a place for both sentiments and needs in our lives let's not kid ourselves.

    submitted by /u/JambonCuit420
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